


Hate

by Lapislaz



Category: Smallville
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, jitters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 23:55:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lapislaz/pseuds/Lapislaz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lex ponders possibilities after "Jitters".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hate

I hate him.

I hate him - standing there with his Adonis-like fond father and his flame-haired beauty mother and they are smiling and laughing and embracing each other with a true emotional connection to each other that flares like a nova in the blackness of the night.

I hate him - as I stand here entangled with my straggle-haired weasel of a parent who could not care less if I had lived or died this night, and is using me as an excuse to evade nosy journalists and scandal-mongers. He doesn't care that I've had a harrowing experience. He doesn't care that he lied to me with a straight face and a blatant disregard for familial ties. He embraces me like a python embraces his prey - ready to eat me for dinner if he's hungry enough.

Clark once asked me if I ever wondered what would have happened if I hadn't been in that cornfield when the sky fell on me like a tidal wave. I told him that it didn't matter - that it had happened and I had to deal with that. Lex Luthor, realist par excellence.

But I cannot help but wonder, as I stare at Clark and Jonathan and Martha Kent, what my life might have been like if my father had been killed on that day - perhaps if one of the meteors had landed on the castle or his helicopter. Maybe even the one that killed Lana Lang's parents, if the cosmos had been kind enough to nudge one tiny stone just a few microns one way or the other a few years previous to their destructive end in the target area that used to be the "Corn Capital of the World".

Clark says he has no memories of that day - that it was before he was adopted by the Kents. What if I had been orphaned that day - and adopted by Jonathan and Martha Kent instead of Clark? Or maybe the Kents would have adopted two children, and we would have grown up as brothers. (Oh, yes, I know, I had my mother - she undoubtedly would have felt it her duty to retrieve her inconveniently bereft son from the wilds of the American Heartland. She would have picked me up on the way to the memorial service and then stuffed me back into that suffocating private school for the duration. This is my fantasy - I can ignore all the unpleasant facts that I wish to.)

Wouldn't that be wild? Me as Clark's older brother.

For some reason, that thought makes me ill.

So - let's try another scenario. Let's say Lana's parents, having survived the rain of green death from the sky, decided to adopt the tragically orphaned Lex Luthor. I would have grown up as Lana Lang's older brother - doing farm chores, going to public school, protecting my baby sister as she grew up into the charming young lady she is today. I'd be the over-protective Big Brother - something Lana obviously needs - warning off oafs like Whitney and his overly muscled football-brained friends. Approving of her friendship with Clark.

Hmmm. That just doesn't feel right either, but for different reasons.

If I was Lana's big brother, I'd see a lot of Clark, wouldn't I? The farms adjoin each other - we'd probably be something like friends - maybe even a pseudo-older brother - occasionally running off to go fishing on a lazy Saturday afternoon after chores were done. Hiding out in the barn loft talking football and farming and families. He and Lana would have sent me off with many childish teasings to my senior prom. When the time came, I'd have given him advice on what to do about girls (while warning him not to practice on my sister!). He might have asked my advice about what to do the first time some guy made a pass at him - you know it had to have happened now, boys as pretty as Clark get that, even in Smallville.

Now *there's* an interesting thought. Clark asking me what to do about passes from guys.

What would I have told him, I wonder. Just the thought of talking about it with him ... Gods, I need to get out of this man's arms before I kill him with my bare hands. That would make a great headline, wouldn't it? Stressed-Out Luthor Heir Murders Over-Acting Father In Front Of Hundreds Of Witnesses. Film at Eleven.

I still hate him.

He has everything I want and will never have. If the Kents held out their hands to me right now, I would kill my own father and climb over his body to crawl to them. Turning my face from Paradise Lost, I stare into the face so close to mine - this false, deceiving bastard who cares no more about that factory worker than I care how many clean shirts I have in my closet. This toad who would rather bury a man than try to save him if wasn't cost-effective. This worthless slime who has raised me in his own image.

I hate him.


End file.
